


Buried our differences out in the yard

by dwellingondreams



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Adam Meditates on Death, Adam Needs Therapy, Adam's Catholic Guilt, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Animal Death, Comfort/Angst, Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kamala Probably Does Too, Let Farah Have a Parrot, One Shot, Pet Cemetery, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, loss of pet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28948938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwellingondreams/pseuds/dwellingondreams
Summary: "Expectation is the currency of fools/I spent it on you, I spent it on you." - Tow'rs, 'The Kitchen'.He opens his mouth to ask another question, then stops. It is clear they’ve arrived at a sacred patch. The grassiest part of the meadow- that’s really what this lot is, a meadow in the middle of a town- is some sort of lichyard. Small stones and wooden crosses dot the ground, some weighed down with fraying collars or chains.“Welcome to Wayhaven’s pet cemetery,” Kamala says, without preamble.They stand there together for a moment in the moonlight, watching the grass dance in the wind and gust around the lonely little graves. There’s a few bundles of flowers at the more recent ones. “I’ll dig,” he says. “You sit with Honey.” For once, she doesn’t argue with him, but crouches down in the grass, laying the bundle gently on the ground beside her.(Adam and the Detective handle a pet funeral and reflect on their own losses.)
Relationships: Female Detective/Adam du Mortain
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Buried our differences out in the yard

He hasn’t followed what anyone might call ‘a regular sleeping schedule’ since he was a child, so Adam is very used to finding himself wide awake and restless at three in the morning. 

Contrary to popular belief (and the Detective’s irritating assumptions), vampires do need to rest at some point. No sentient creature can exist in perpetual motion, and just as he eventually needs to feed, Adam eventually will need to sleep. He just prefers power naps to long rests at night. It makes more sense for his work, since so much of what Unit Bravo does takes place after dark. 

But as it stands, since coming to Wayhaven Adam has found himself sleeping at night more often, perhaps because the unit’s schedules have begun to sync with their human liaison, and as a human, she does typically work by day and rest by night. It can be tedious, the realization that she will not be ‘on’ at all times unless she’s gotten her eight hours of sleep, but he vastly prefers a well rested and chipper Kamala Batra to an exhausted and vicious Kamala Batra. 

He has a sudden thought of a particular night when they were patrolling town, and how suddenly she seemed cobra-like in the dark, jittery with spent energy and her eyes barely open, even as she turned yet another corner, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of her peacoat. Adam prides himself on being professional, and is certainly not here to pick childish arguments with her the way Morgan sometimes does, but he’d felt a strange temptation in that moment to provoke her, to see if she might really hiss and spit. 

He doesn’t know why. The thought had unnerved him, reminded him of his younger self, an arrogant little boy goading one of his father’s hunting hounds while it was penned up until it crashed against the gate, snarling, and he jumped back, laughing and trembling. 

The Detective is not a dog; she’s scared of dogs, her mother included that in her file, with an almost sheepish note: ‘Suffered bite to left calf from dog attack when she was six, has phobia of most large breeds.’ He’d wondered, later, rather waspishly, where Agent Batra was, while her six year old child was being mauled, but it’s not his place to speculate on the private family life of his colleagues.

He remembers his own mother scolding him softly, for an instant, and she is there behind him as he puts on his shoes, her skirts whispering across the floor, the smell of lavender perfume in her long blonde hair, concealed by her veil. He dismisses her summarily, as he dismisses most spectres, but shivers involuntarily as he stands back up. Kamala wears very strong perfume, though he knows on some level that his senses render all perfumes as ‘strong’. 

She never smells like lavender, though, but passionfruit or mango or, often, oranges. He remembers the first time he tried an orange; a special treat when he was eight or nine at breakfast one morning, the juice spurting across his face as he peeled it, and his sister’s giggles. 

Or in Haley’s bakery, the Detective showing Farah some candied orange and lemon peals, coated in sugar and dipped in chocolate. 

“Try it,” Kamala is saying, a smile playing on her lips as Farah sniffs it cautiously, then crunches down. 

“You’re getting sugar everywhere,” Morgan complains, sweeping her hand across the table top, while Nate smiles good-naturedly, as Farah’s eyes go wide, lit up like amber in the sunlight, and she exclaims, a hand to her dainty mouth, “It’s good! It’s so good!”

“They’re my favorite,” Kamala says, as he steps out into the cold night air. Her voice fades, replaced by the distant sounds of crickets and the hoot of an owl. 

Goosebumps have broken out across the skin of his arms, under the short sleeves of his plain white undershirt. He runs his fingers down them until the skin smooths back out, annoyed with himself. He should be sleeping. He has nothing else to do, and he’s never been one to waste time twiddling his thumbs. If he can’t rest, he should be reading or working on a report, doing something useful with his time. He spends plenty of time in the facility’s gym and there’s no reason to go for a run at this time.

He runs anyways, feels the pavement briefly fall away beneath him before it turns into grass and soil as he vanishes into the woods. He’ll do a loop of the town, and while it won’t tire him in the least, it might make it easier to nap when he returns, or at least concentrate on something else. He should feel content. They are not working on any pressing cases at the moment; Wayhaven is safe. 

Just to be sure of that last statement, he forces himself to slow down enough to actually take in his surroundings, though his jog is still close to a human’s all-out sprint. The forest is quiet and peaceful, hushed with the wet weight of a spring night (or morning). So too are the suburban outskirts of town; rows of quiet neighborhoods with varying degrees of unkempt gardens and yards. 

There are no white picket fences or neat hedgerows here; Adam hadn’t thought much of it when they first arrived in town, but now he finds it oddly charming. None of the houses look the same, though most of them are small, and a few windows glow with muffled light, though most are dark. There are very few streetlights until he reaches the downtown center of town, past parked cars and empty streets, shuttered businesses and dead signs. 

He’s outside the police department when his phone begins to ring. Startled, he takes it out of his pocket, expecting to see Nate’s name; it’d be just like him to call to check up on him, like a worried older sibling, though Adam has at least seven hundred years on him. But it isn’t Nathaniel; it’s the detective- Kamala, she entered her number as simply her name, with a sun symbol after it. 

He answers immediately, feeling his heart race increase incrementally. In his experience, humans do not make calls at three in the morning unless something has gone terribly wrong. 

“What is it?” he demands, turning on his heel as if he could hear her voice from here, besides the tinny sound on the phone. “Where are you? Are you hurt?”

He can’t imagine she’d have gone out at this time of night, especially on a week day, but humans do absurd things, they’re creatures of impulse. She could have had an accident in her flat; dropped something heavy on herself, or cut a limb open while trying to make herself food, or started a fire by forgetting to put out a candle or unplug something. He doesn’t think of her as a reckless person, usually, but she can be careless, especially when she’s distracted or tired. 

At least she called, he thinks, remembering with discomfit the overwhelming fury and horror he’d felt when he realized she went to the hospital alone to get those samples from Murphy, and how it had irked him that she’d left a voicemail for Nate, and not for him. 

“I’m okay,” she sounds like she’s crying; he stiffens. He’s only seen her weep once, in the aftermath of Murphy’s capture, lying on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, gripping her mother’s hands tightly. “Um- I just- I’m home, and my…” he can’t make out the rest of what she says; she’s crying too hard and the call is garbled. 

What if she isn’t alright? Humans are always understating injuries or traumas, and then collapsing from them later. She could be bleeding out on the floor while babbling that she’s fine. 

“Stay where you are,” he says brusquely, and hangs up. The call will drop anyways if he tries to stay on the line while running. 

Two minutes later he’s on her fire escape; he’s tempted to just shatter the window, but restrains himself long enough to fiddle with the frame instead. To his surprise, it slides right up. Either she forget to lock it, or it’s always been like this. He glares as he carefully angles his body through the frame. Anyone could climb up here and right into her flat; does she think they wouldn’t just because she’s on the third floor? 

The lights are on inside, casting a warm orangey-yellow glow to the small, cozy sitting room, and to his relief there are no signs of a struggle or break-in, despite his own. He doesn’t smell blood, either, which is good. 

“Kamala!” He meant to bark ‘Detective’ instead, but it slipped out. 

“I’m here,” she says, miserably, from somewhere in her tiny galley kitchen, and he realizes with concern that she must be on the floor, because otherwise he’d be able to see her from here. Did she fall and hurt herself? Break an ankle? He remembers turning his as a youth of fifteen or sixteen, and once again the pain shoots up his foot, though that was many, many lifetimes ago. 

He finds her huddled on the cracked linoleum floor, face swollen and shiny with tears, hair a black bedraggled mess, clutching a small bundle of quilt to her chest. 

“What is it?” he demands, crouching down beside her, then realizes she’s holding her cat. 

He doesn’t know the animal very well, has only encountered it a few times from his brief stay here while they were guarding her from Murphy- and his gut twists at that failure, yet again- but he remembers an orange tabby, regarding him watchfully from under the coffee table, as Farah tried and failed to coax it out with a piece of string, entranced like a child at the zoo. 

His own experience as a boy was always with dogs; his father’s household only kept cats for mousing in the cellars and kitchens. His sister had a pet fox for a brief while, which would keep him up all nights with its distant chatters, yelps, and shrieks of laughter. 

“Honey was sick tonight, I was going to t-take him to the vet in the morning,” she stammers, “and then he… I checked on him and he…”

The bundle is not moving. 

While part of him is overcome with relief that she’s not hurt, another part of him creases in sympathy all the same. He remembers having to put down a horse, once, after a broken leg, how its breath had fanned out warm and sweet across his face, even as it panted in pain while he blinked back boyish tears and readied the blade at its pulsing throat. 

“How old was he?” he asks quietly, putting a hand on the quilt. She doesn’t jerk away, which he takes as a good sign. 

“S-sixteen,” she sniffs, wiping at her nose, then blinks at him as if seeing him for the first time. 

“Sorry,” Kamala croaks. “You- you probably think I’m being ridiculous. He… he was an old man cat.” She glances down at the bundle, then seems to start crying anew. 

Please stop, he thinks, but says instead, “I don’t think you’re being ridiculous. I was just- I was concerned, when you called me so late. I thought you might have been hurt.”

She scrunches up her nose and says, “I’m sorry- did I wake-,” she cuts herself off. “Sorry. I just… I don’t know what I was thinking, I was just so- I was thinking who I could call who wouldn’t be asleep or freaked out, and-,”

“Don’t be sorry,” he says, though it comes out sterner than he meant it. “I’m not upset you called.” He doesn’t like to think of her sitting here on the floor, weeping and cradling her dead pet, alone. 

“I… I have to do something with him,” she says, coughing as she clears her throat. He looks up and wrenches a roll of paper towels off the counter, tearing some off and handing them to her as she mops at her face. “I can’t just- we have to take him somewhere, I can’t just keep him wrapped up…”

Practically speaking, she’s right about that. He’s had enough experience with dead animals- for a moment his mouth is full of blood and furs as he tears into the throat of a mountain lion besides a dusty trail, the moon hanging low overhead, and the cat mewls and bucks weakly beneath him, until it suddenly stops, going limp- to know that they can’t just leave the… body around for hours on end until morning. 

“I’ll take it- take him,” he corrects himself just in time, seeing the outraged gleam in her dark eyes- they seem huge now, in the dim half-light of the kitchen, like marbles in her face- “I’ll take him somewhere to… to bury him. You should go back to bed and get some sleep.”

“No,” she says, struggling to her feet- she’s slipping on the tile in her fuzzy socks, so he helps her stand up, ignoring the heat prickling under his skin like sunburn when he has to gently hold her by the elbows to do so. Standing, without her shoes on, she comes just to his chest, and the kitchen feels far too small and cramped, like he’s crouched in a child’s dollhouse. 

“No,” Kamala says, more firmly, staring up at him, her face set in a familiar look of stony determination. “I’m coming with you, I just-,” she swallows hard, her throat bobbing. “Can you hold him, while I put my shoes and coat on?”

He wants to protest, but finds himself taking the bundle without complaint. She stands there for a moment, sniffling again, then smooths her shaky hands down her pyjamas bottoms- they’re baggy on her hips and decorated with a bright floral pattern- before she edges around him, out of the kitchen, and rushes back into her bedroom to change. 

Adam remembers the way he felt when his nephew was placed in his arms, close to a thousand years ago, a red-faced, squalling infant with a tuft of white blonde hair, the color his mother swore his own had been, as a little boy. He’d stood there rather uselessly in armor save for his helm, fresh off the road, sweaty and dirty and impatiently waiting for a nursemaid to take the infant away so he could speak with his father. 

He’d been a man grown by then, but still a boy at heart, arrogant and prideful, more concerned with glory and wealth than anything else, with his precious legacy, rather than what was right in front of him, the people he loved, the ones he should have loved better. 

He glances down at the glimpse of orange fur visible through the faded quilt, and presses two fingers gently down on it. He’s still warm. He takes his fingers away, oddly shaken, though he has seen thousands and thousands of people and animals dead over the course of his life, some quickly, some slowly, some on the battlefield, others in the sickbeds, and some for his dinner. 

He can understand the odd pang of sympathy for a- for a colleague’s beloved pet- but suddenly there is a swell of grief in his throat. Because it feels like an infant in his arms? Because he was frightened for Kamala, when he thought she might be hurt? Because he knows he is not enough, and never will be? Another could hold her and comfort her. He can’t. He is just standing here, holding yet another corpse, oddly shamed by it, as though it was his failing, and maybe it is. 

She reemerges from her bedroom, looking slightly less overwhelmed and grief stricken, though still upset, her coat pulled haphazardly over her pyjamas, and her feet tucked into a pair of old sneakers. Her chin length hair is pulled back from her face with a worn headband, and she wrings her hands together for a moment, before carefully taking the bundle back from Adam, who suddenly feels empty and awkward without it. 

“I want to bury him in a field,” she says, clearly, not looking up at him, and shifting in her squeaky shoes on the tiles. “It’s only a block away, we can walk.”

“Alright,” he says, and opens her front door for her. “Do you have your keys and your phone?” It’s the same thing he’s asked her a thousand times, but she shoots him a watery smile now, nodding silently as she passes him. 

They walk through the dim halls of her building, down the echoing stairwell, and outside, mercifully avoiding any encounters with nosy neighbors at this time of day. Adam still hasn’t fully recovered from the time a drunken old woman slurred at him about how ‘that Kamala is a lucky girl’ while licking her lips as he and Nate quickly climbed the stairs. 

He casts another glance down at Kamala as they make their way along the silent street, drifting in and out of patches of flickering lamplight, and wonders if he should say something, do something. But it’s hard enough just to measure his pace so he doesn’t outstride Kamala’s short legs, as she trudges along beside him, her head bowed. 

“Honey seems to have been a fine cat,” is the best he can come up with. 

To his surprise, Kamala doesn’t seem offended by this, and shoots him an oddly grateful look. “He is- he was,” she corrects herself, blinking hard, though maybe it’s just from the harsh street light. “The finest of cats.” She smiles thinly, then looks away again, sniffing. “Sorry. You probably think I’m being ridiculous.”

“I don’t,” Adam frowns. “Why would I find your grief ridiculous? It’s a natural human response.”

“Human. Right,” she seems to almost chuckle humorlessly, then says, “I don’t know. Because he’s- he’s just a cat. They only live twenty years or so, at most. That’s… nothing to you.”

No, he wants to say, when I was twenty six and fighting in France, twenty was nothing to me, because I thought, as all young men do, that I would live forever. And twenty six was not so young, then. Twenty was nothing to me then. I killed men who were twenty, nineteen, eighteen, cut them down like they were just straw and cloth mannequins. Now it’s everything. You’d be surprised how much more life means, when you’re not in danger of losing it at any moment. 

Instead he says, “It’s not nothing. We- Nathaniel and I have both had pets before. In our lifetimes and… after we were turned.”

“Really?” she sounds shocked. 

“Yes,” he says. “Less so in recent years… we have much more work now than we did even fifty years ago. Less time for our own amusements.”

They fall back into silence, listening to the faint bark of a dog several streets away. 

“You don’t strike me as a cat person,” she says. 

“I’m not,” now he smiles, faintly. “I was raised with dogs. I don’t mind them, though. And Nate loves animals of all kinds.”

“Not Morgan?” She sounds like she’s forgotten, even for the moment, some of her pain, and he’s eager to keep up the delusion. 

“Morgan doesn’t like to feel… depended on,” he says. “Farah has been asking about getting some sort of pet. But Nate insists she prove she is responsible enough to care for one, first, because he knows otherwise it will fall onto him and I.”

“She could have fish,” Kamala suggests. “Though that might be boring, after a while.”

“She has a short attention span,” Adam agrees, though his tone is fond. “Which is why Nate is concerned.”

“A bird,” Kamala actually looks up at him, not quite smiling, but illuminated by the street light. “She’d love a bird. A parakeet, or a parrot- oh, she could teach it how to talk-,”

“No,” Adam says, instinctively at the thought. “No, absolutely not.”

“Well, I’m going to suggest it.”

“I strongly suggest you don’t.”

She just huffs aloud at that, which he knows means ‘we’ll see’. She always makes that sound before she doesn’t something he’s specifically instructed her not to do. Just a few months ago, it infuriated him, even when he knew he was being unreasonable. He had no idea why she provoked such a response in him. He’d dealt with plenty of people he hadn’t gotten along with before. Why should her unprofessional attitude be any different? But then he’d been forced to get to know her, to spend time with her, and- well, he was wrong. 

Kamala isn’t unprofessional or irresponsible, and sometimes her way of thinking is a welcome relief from the monotony the unit can fall into otherwise, of him and Nate strenuously debating a course of action while Morgan rolls her eyes and makes snide comments, and Farah eggs them both on, more amused by the arguing than anything else. 

And he doesn’t think any less of her for her grief over her pet. If anything, he thinks more of her, though he knew she was a compassionate, kindly person from the moment she had to walk away after they found that little boy’s body, her shoulders shaking with restrained sobs. 

Just because she feels things deeply doesn’t mean she isn’t a brilliant detective and an incredibly strong person. Other people would have had a full-on nervous breakdown when confronted with the truth of their world. Other people would never have managed to escape from Murphy without any help or weapons, only their wits about them. 

It is only as the field, which is really more of an empty overgrown lot, or two combined lots, comes into view, does he realize they have nothing to dig with. That’s not necessarily a problem; he’s strong enough to tear into the soil with his bare hands, especially if it’s already wet and loosened by weeks of rainy days. But he has just opened his mouth when she says, “The shed. Some kids broke the lock on it months ago. They go in there to smoke and have sex.”

He follows her gaze to a small, ramshackle maintenance shed on the corner of the vacant property, overgrown with weeds and covered in faded graffiti. “Who owns this land?”

“Some property developer,” she says. “They bought it up years ago, when I was just a kid, and said they were going to put houses in here, or condos. Or a department store. Never happened. The town keeps talking about making it a park, but… nothing’s come of that, so far.” 

She stops as they near the shed. “There should be a shovel inside.”

He cautiously opens the door, and has to stoop over to enter the small, musty space. The ground is littered with trash and cigarette butts, all of which he can see perfectly clearly in the dark, despite it being pitch black inside. He finds a rusted old shovel and brings it out, then follows her across the field. 

Unlike in a city or even a larger town, some stars are clearly visible in the gradually lightening sky overhead. It must be close to four in the morning now, and sunrise isn’t so far off. Kamala yawns as they walk through the long grass, which licks at their legs. There’s more trash on the ground here, though less than he’d expected, and even some wildflowers in bloom. 

“I got Honey when I was thirteen,” she says. “My mum promised we could adopt a pet from the animal shelter if I got straight As in school. So I worked my butt off, and I did.”

He can picture a young Kamala, her thick glossy dark hair confined to two bouncy pigtails, grinning through a set of braces and clutching a certificate at a science fair- quiet clearly, because he’s seen that photograph on her mother’s desk many, many times. He doesn’t say anything, though. That Rebecca Batra loves her daughter is quite obvious. Whether she expresses that in the most… productive manner is another matter, but it’s not his place to say anything about that. 

“And you chose Honey,” he says. 

“Yep. He was just a little scrappy kitten back then, with giant ears.” Kamala clutches the quilt to her chest a little tighter. “He loved me all at once, though, he climbed all over me as soon as they took him out of his cage. So we took him home that day. I think Mum was just relieved I didn’t change my mind and demand a puppy.”

“Does she like cats as well?”

Kamala shrugs. “I’m not sure. She always liked Honey, though, at least, when she was home to see him.” 

She doesn’t sound bitter, or angry about it, as many in her position would be. In fact, she has always discussed her childhood openly and casually, as if it were normal to spend most of her days alone, once she was old enough to no longer require a nanny or babysitter. To not see much of her mother unless it was a holiday. It sounds as if she spent much of her time with Tina’s family, just to not go back to an empty house. 

He opens his mouth to ask another question, then stops. It is clear they’ve arrived at a sacred patch. The grassiest part of the meadow- that’s really what this lot is, a meadow in the middle of a town- is some sort of lichyard. Small stones and wooden crosses dot the ground, some weighed down with fraying collars or chains. 

“Welcome to Wayhaven’s pet cemetery,” Kamala says, without preamble.

They stand there together for a moment in the moonlight, watching the grass dance in the wind and gust around the lonely little graves. There’s a few bundles of flowers at the more recent ones. 

“I’ll dig,” he says. “You sit with Honey.”

For once, she doesn’t argue with him, but crouches down in the grass, laying the bundle gently on the ground beside her. 

Adam finds a space, makes sure he isn’t intruding on any other grave, and begins to dig. It’s easy work; the grass where he’s standing was completely flattened and dead from footprints to begin with, and the soil is loose and damp. 

Besides, he doesn’t have to dig more than a few feet, to bury a cat. He’s buried human bodies, and that’s a much more arduous process. Still, he puts his back into it as if he were about to bury a person, a friend, and within minutes has a three foot deep, one foot wide hole. 

Kamala is visibly shocked at how quickly he finished. 

“Wow,” she says, as he sets down the shovel, not breathing hard in the least, and brushing dirt off his boots. 

“Um,” she clambers back to her feet, looks helplessly between him and the bundle for a moment.

“I can walk away,” he nods into the distance. “If you would prefer to be alone.”

“No,” she says. “No, of course not, I- I’m glad you’re here with me, Adam. Really. You’re a wonderful friend, to do this.”

He feels an odd little lump in his throat, and clears it uncomfortably, looking away.

“Okay,” she breathes, and rummages in her coat, coming up with a small bottle.

Adam stares at it as it catches in the moonlight. “Is that… whiskey?”

“Just a little gin,” she says, defensively. “You know, they sell them at the checkout at liquor stores…”

She opens it, takes a quick sip, exhaling, and then offers it to him. 

He starts to shake his head minutely, then seeing her teary eyes, takes it and sips. He barely feels it slide down his throat, nor would he even if he’d downed it all in one go. He hasn’t been drunk in a very, very long time. 

To his surprise, she pours the rest out into the grave, then tucks the empty bottle back into her pocket. 

Slowly, she gathers Honey up in her arms, the quilt spilling over as she kneels down and tucks him into the hole, then stays there for a moment, a hand resting on it, tears rolling down her cheeks. Adam says nothing, just waits, until she straightens back up, takes the shovel, and begins to dump dirt back into the hole. There’s not much to. 

When she’s almost done, she puts the shovel down and picks the last handful or two up with her bare hands, even as if it spills through her clenched fists like sand. He does likewise, and together they finish burying her cat. Adam smooths the mound down with the spade of the shovel. 

“I’ll have to get a sign made for him,” Kamala says. She drops something on top of the grave; it’s a crocheted toy mouse, which tinkles lightly as it hits the ground. 

Adam looks around. The sky is more blue than black now, and the stars seem fainter. The wind isn’t warm, but it’s not freezing either, almost gentle. “It’s peaceful here,” he says. “I think he’d like it.”

“You think so?” she asks hoarsely, and then takes his arm, to his surprise. 

Adam stands beside her for a moment, and stiffens a little when her head rests on his arm, but only for a few seconds before she pulls back away. 

“Goodbye, Honey,” she says. “You were a very good cat.”

“Goodbye,” he echoes her. 

Then they walk back home in silence, much slower than they came. 

By the time they’re back inside her building, the dawn is clearly approaching. 

“You should call out of work,” he tells her, as they climb the stairs. “You’ll be exhausted.”

“I’ll just take a half day,” she says tiredly. “And pray nothing terrible happens before noon. Sung will be annoyed with me.”

“If Captain Sung has a problem with it, he can take it up with me,” Adam says sharply, sliding back into what Morgan calls his Commanding Agent Voice. 

Kamala glances up at him in what seems like bemusement. “Alright.”

He intends to just see her to her door- and make sure that window is actually locked- but as she steps inside she says, “Do… do you think you could stay a little longer? I won’t make you stay up and talk, I just… I really don’t want to go to bed by myself right now.”

Ordinarily that sentence would have led to a very awkward silence between them, but she’s clearly too exhausted to notice, and he, after a moment, nods. He sat up in her hospital room, after the Murphy incident. He left before she woke up, but he could have sworn she murmured his name in her sleep, once. He tries not to linger on it. 

He takes off his boots by the door, then follows her into her bedroom, turning away, even though she’s only taking off her coat. 

When he turns back around, she’s removed her headband as well, her hair spilling back around her ears, and with a small, nervous smile, sliding into her bed. He looks around for a chair to sit in, then realizes she’s left space for him. 

“Unless you’re uncomfortable,” she mumbles, sounding already half-asleep as she fumbles with her bedside lamp. 

He is, but he can’t bring himself to leave her here like this, alone, in the dark. Instead he stiffly approaches and tries as best he can to squeeze his large frame beside her without inadvertently crushing her, or toppling off and onto the cluttered floor. Finally, he decides the most comfortable position is to simply lie on his side, but it feels presumptuous to lie facing herself, so he turns his back to her instead. 

“G’night,” she whispers. “Thank you, Adam.”

He presses his lips together and doesn’t say anything, afraid of how he might sound. 

Within minutes, he can tell she’s asleep by her breathing. He should get up and go now- he can leave silently, without waking her. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t move. After another few moments she stirs and murmurs in her sleep, shifting closer to him, as if seeking out his warmth. He can feel her breath gently blowing against his spine, and then the warm weight of her head. 

Something inside him is screaming to roll over and face her, but he focuses on the shadows on her bedroom wall instead, and stays like that, not sleeping, not moving, a living statue, until sunlight is streaming into her bedroom. He slowly gets up then, careful to avoid creaking floorboards, and closes her curtains for her, so she’s not wrenched from her sleep. 

When he turns back to make sure she hasn’t woken, she’s buried her head in the pillow his was resting on, an arm slung out as if seeking him. 

Adam lets himself watch her for another moment, then leaves the room, something weighing down against his chest and fluttering out of it at the same time.


End file.
